One Eye To The Telescope
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: He looks for doors, doors with locks and keys, doors without locks and keys, doors disguised as windows, doors disguised as teacakes. Funny how magic doesn't cure madness, after all. AU Jefferson/Emma, post-Hat Trick.
1. Through

**A/N: I think I warned people that there would be fic. It's part of my apparent compulsion to write for every version of the Hatter, ever. I think I also warned people that I like to write complete nutters, so, eh... here you go.**

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><p><strong>One Eye To The Telescope<strong>

He's not dead. Of course he's not dead, because he's alive, and alive people are not dead. And dangerous, we shouldn't forget dangerous. Dangerous and not dead and beating beating beating— there's a warm dark around him and he thinks of the pathway between worlds.

If she had just tried a little harder, he thinks, she could have made the magic sing without inflicting grievous bodily harm— he's fine, though, really, the cuts and bruises heal and he could paint a masterpiece as long as he only used red red red— but he can't be angry because because here he is, the magic worked, he's more or less Somewhere Else, except for the fact that Somewhere Else isn't Anywhere In Particular, but he doesn't mind because at least Somewhere Else is not Storybrooke, or that House. He was getting pretty tired of the decor. It made him want to throw throw pillows at the walls and climb up after them to the roof to the rafters.

Funny how magic doesn't cure madness, after all. He didn't really expect it to, though, so no harm done. The warm dark dark around him is moving just slightly, as though it's breathing, or maybe he's breathing, and it's using his breath and breathing through him. He looks for doors, doors with locks and keys, doors without locks and keys, doors disguised as windows, doors disguised as teacakes. Nothing doing. Just the warm breathing dark, which embraces him happily.

He hasn't been embraced in oh so long. Just long enough that he can wrap his arms around himself now and smile at the fiction. It's just a story, that's all, just a history, his story, and though he doesn't know the ending he knows how it began.

Once upon a time there was a girl who fell down a rabbit hole, or maybe she was pushed. Maybe she jumped. Maybe she drowned and maybe she swam, but either way she washed up on the shores of his consciousness and was everything he'd never wanted and always thought he should ask for. Her hair was the color of the Sheriff's, oddly enough, and her dress was blue, and her eyes were closed when he kissed her, so they told each other tales in the dark and she laughed at him. "It's just a story," she said.

Perhaps they could have grown up together, two children hand in hand, if not for the fact that Time kept grabbing hold of him with both hands and refused to let go, regardless of how he kicked and screams. Kicks and screams. He's still in motion, still ticking quietly to himself, and there's the thought of his daughter's mother at the back of his befuddled head, smiling, smiling and saying his name.

The warm dark clutches him closer, momentarily, and Jefferson's own smile fades. The motion is receding, waves of the ocean on a disappearing shore, eight-count heart-beat. In the distance, the sound of keys in locks, of doors _sclich_ing open. He's settled onto a flat surface with a grain to it, against it. He runs his fingers through his own hair in the absence of company.

"Well," he thinks, or thinks he thinks, to himself, or anyone who's listening. "No time like the present."

No present like the time.

He pushes himself to his feet in the warm warm dark, and Emma Swan stumbles backwards as the erstwhile madman appears in her apartment, already smiling as though fresh from the punchline of some cosmic joke.

"Hi!" he says. "Thank you. I don't suppose you have any tea?"


	2. A River In Egypt

**A/N: Yes, yet another one-shot gone horribly chaptered. It was just supposed to be a ficlet, and now it's... this thing. Plot is expanding rapidly, so keep an eye out. I hope.  
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><p><strong>Part Two: A River In Egypt<strong>

Emma backs up a step, then another, like it's too hard to take that this weirdo is standing in her apartment— is it weirder that he popped out of his own hat, or his own intrinsic weirdness weird enough?— and she needs to get away from it, get some perspective. Or, he amends the thought, it's just possible that she recalls that the last time she saw him, he shoved her into a wall. He goes into defensive posture on the off-chance, holds his empty hands up to show her how it is.

"I lost the gun," he says. "Look at me, I'm harmless."

"You're _full of it,_" Emma grits out through her teeth. "No one would ever look at you and think that you're harmless."

He stands up straight, hands still up and out. "You did," he reminds her, but this is patently the wrong thing to bring up. She's still got a hand on the gun in its holster, and now she looks _angry_.

"I'm aware that you have deep psychological issues," she says, "and that you claim to have been trapped in that house for twenty-eight years, and if that's true, maybe I can be a little understanding. But get this straight, buster. Drugging people, tying them up, and attacking them for any reason is _not_ acceptable social behavior."

He sighs, drops his head slightly to one side, closes his eyes. "I told you. I had my reasons."

"Yeah, well, your reasons," says Emma— whoops, she's still angry— "aren't good enough. I'm going to take you in. I'm going to take you in right now. I'm going to put you behind bars, where you belong."

"With Ms. Blanchard?" He raises his eyebrows. "Do you really think that's wise?"

He watches her frustration, notes it coolly; she hates to have to admit it, but it really isn't. This is encouraging, her tacit acknowledgment of the fact, and he quirks a half smile and takes a step towards her.

"You know it, and I know it," he says, softly. "There are bigger things out there than me— bigger than you, even, and you're _far_ more special than a humble hat maker." Her eyes flick to his, briefly, and he takes the spark deep within as a sign. His voice drifts lower, slightly rough around the edges, and he takes one more step. "You keep looking, keep searching, and it'd be so much clearer if you'd just open your eyes. All you need to find is the proof."

Emma blinks, swallows. "What proof?"

His hat is in his hands. He holds it toward her, presenting her a face momentarily smooth and bland, all artifice and anger tucked away for the time when it's needed. All madness waiting for him, waiting just inside the brim of the magic hat.

"It works," he says. "You did it."

She swallows again. "I didn't do anything."

"You saw it."

"What are you talking about?"

"Right here," he says, patiently now— the end is just there, and he can wait, when he knows it's coming. "Just now."

"There _are_ such things as magicians," she says. She dips her head, and her hair falls forward. She reminds him of _her_, a bit. The hair, mostly. The stubbornness, certainly, and the reluctance to do as she's told. The difficulty letting go of reality, or what she sees as reality, and the ignorance of the utter freedom that comes from hanging up your inhibitions for a more worthy day. Madness is waiting; let it wait. "Magicians, and tricks. Optical illusions."

He settles his shoulders back, raises his eyebrows. "Oh, no?" he says. Challenging, now. How long has she been here— he watched her arrive— and how much proof has she seen, and how much more difficult is it now to cling to denial? Enough. Enough, then. He can make it impossible.

"Why'd you bring the hat, Emma?"

She can't answer it, because she doesn't know. It's patently obvious, looking at her. He twitches, just a little, a twitch of a smile and a sideways jerk of his head, squinting at her briefly.

"Well, have it your way," he says, and because denial is a habit that's hard to break, he takes her by the hand, sets all his weight against her, and pulls. The strength of his belief is enough to take them through. Two in. Hat's rules.


	3. Get My Feet On Level Ground

**A/N: Heads up about the two one shots I've written for this pairing, _The Tarantist_ and _Phrenology_. There will be a few references to them in this, starting with this chapter.**

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><p><strong>Part Three: Get My Feet On Level Ground<strong>

The second they tumble through into the hat, whatever clarity of thought he's had till now is gone. The magic pushes and pulls at him, spins giggling fingers round his head, lady-like and gloved, and he grins into the dark and lets out a sigh of relief in Emma's ear. The air exchange, the space between the two of them, is enough to throw him off balance; so when they land in the Hall of Doors, they're not upright. He lands below— harder than expected, ouch— and she crashes into him, apparently elbows first— _ouch_.

She doesn't roll off him immediately, which he maybe kind of likes. She's probably just recovering, but her head is on his chest and her hair is in his face, and apart from the sudden need to sneeze, it's lovely.

"That didn't just happen," says Emma, maybe dazed, maybe days worth of dazed. And he grins, because she will be a skeptic to the last, he just knows it.

Let it never be said that Jefferson backed down from a challenge.

He shrugs, best as he can lying flat on his back on a beautifully tiled floor. "Fine. It didn't happen."

But she's a realist, all the same. "Sure, make me the liar," she grumbles, shoving off of him. For a moment in time she hangs poised over him, half-straddled, one hand in the air and the other palm-delicately-down just above his waist. It's a flash in the pan. It's over before it happens, almost, and Jefferson rises to follow her. They stand the space of a floor tile away from each other, and her eyes are level with his.

"I didn't say you were a liar," he clarifies. "I think you just look at reality a little differently than other people."

Emma shakes her head and scoffs. "To listen to you, I'd think you were actually sane."

Jefferson grins, then, and it's sudden and unexpected and takes even him by surprise. He hasn't smiled this way in a long time, and it's terrifying, really. All those teeth.

"We should really be upfront at this stage in our relationship," he says. "So, however crazy you thought I was in Storybrooke—"

"_Really_ crazy."

"Well," he continues, and clears his throat. "Brace yourself. You ain't seen nothin' yet."

When he swallows the magic loosens its hold around his throat, a little, so the air comes through on top of it and he can breathe breathe, not quite close enough to Emma to breathe the same air as she but at the same time, this room is Elsewhere, and it's an Elsewhere she's never been, so the air does tie them together after all, and oxygen reaches out to both of them and pulls them closer. Emma looks worried, which he can understand, because A. she's just been pulled through a top hat and that's not actually physically possible as far as she's concerned and B. he's still doing that smile, and now he's taken a step in her direction.

She looks away from him, which is a triumph and a loss at the same time. To see her so disconcerted is delicious, like ice cream, and makes him sick, like ice cream.

"Okay," she says, and she's concentrating on her breathing, too, he can tell. She inhales and exhales slowly, hands raising a little from her sides as if to calm herself. "Okay. I'm not saying I believe this. This could all be some crazy dream. It's not—" She stutters to a stop for a second. "It's not as though I haven't had some weird dreams from time to time."

"Especially since you met me, huh?" Jefferson laughs a little. "I bet. I bet I wander through now and then."

She eyes him. "Those aren't dreams. Those are nightmares?"

"Oh?" He dips his chin, purses his lips a little and goes for the innocent look. This conversation is _exhilarating_. How did he forget how much _fun _conversations are when you have them with blonde women? "Sorry to cause you so much distress. I can imagine it's unsettling to have me in your head. It's certainly unsettling to have me in _mine_, which is why I try to stay out of there as much as possible."

"Maybe we could just move on," says Emma, over him sing-songing quietly to himself, Not room enough in here for the both of us. She's looking more worried now. Well, good. She ought to be. "I'm not saying I accept this. But."

"But," says Jefferson agreeably.

Emma's eyes dart to his, and he realizes suddenly that she looks haunted. Hunted. Wanted. Vaunted. If they could just lie back down on the floor and stay there a while.

"Where are we?" she asks him, her voice nearly broken, and Jefferson smiles to himself. Smiles to himself, steps forward, puts one hand on her shoulder and the other on her waist and turns her about, so her back's to him and her eyes are forward.

"Look," he says. "What do you see?"

Emma looks. She sees. She says.

"Doors."

"That's right, doors. That's the hat's magic. It acts as a portal to all other universes. This— this is just a sample. These are the closest to us. If your Storybrooke was Earth, these doors would be your solar system. Beyond them, more. Beyond those, more. All lined up, quiescent, humming with activity, people going on about their normal lives. Most of them never know the difference, never know about their otherworldly cousins."

"Fairy tales," says Emma, breathily, possibly because he's been speaking very low and scratchy in her ear.

"Disney films," says Jefferson. "And the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen, and any other story-teller you care to name."

She steps out from under his spell and his grasp at the same moment, half turns to face him.

"You're saying Walt Disney was in contact with other worlds?"

"I'm saying he had dreams," says Jefferson, fighting to get control of the irritation as it rose surging inside, "and he listened to them."

"Huh," says Emma, and she would like so dearly to resume normal operations as a skeptic, he knows, but there is the little matter of the hall of doors that can be reached through a hat, through a _hat_, Emma, _where are your physics now? _"Okay," she says, "look. For the sake of argument. You're saying that Henry's been right, that the fairy tales in his book are real."

"Exactly that." Jefferson closes his eyes as he nods, and the world disappears, but the smell of the Hall of Doors is the same, that Other Purity that rises above the tramp of feet from myriad universes, the scents of flora and fauna from nowhere and everywhere. He breathes in deep.

"Okay," says Emma. She's shaking her head. "Okay. We'll talk. I'm willing to talk. On the sole condition that you get me out of here and back to my world. The world I know," she amends, at his sideways look. "Get me back to Storybrooke and we'll talk about it."

"Oh, this is enough proof for you all of a sudden?"

She sighs harshly. "I'm a little out of my element here, Jefferson. Get my feet on level ground and let me think clearly."

"Element," he says, "out of your element. But that's the point, Emma, don't you see? Don't you see?" He's in her face again, leaning a little too close, and the Other Purity is a thin barrier between them. "You're in exactly your element, Emma, don't you understand?" He draws back, just a little, just enough to let her see his smile without being terrified he's about to eat her face, because he wouldn't, at least not without proper seasoning, and probably not even then. "Would you like to see where your mother was born?" he whispers. "Or where you were conceived? I know the places. I know them very well. I can guide you."

He's got her hand, then, and he's tugging her on towards the rows of doors, blithely, even as she sputters and protests. Her mouth is spilling negatives, but he doesn't have to pull all that hard. She's terrified, he thinks, she doesn't know what's going on or where she is, and she's with a self-acknowledged madman who may or may not have her best interests at heart. It's perfect.

Two sets of footsteps on the beautiful floor, the sounds of hollow, of two hands tightly entwined, of a door, opening, of Other Purity, empty.


	4. Planted Us In Foreign Soil

**Part Four: Planted Us In Foreign Soil**

The door to the world of fairy tales— Jefferson's erstwhile homeland— opens onto a grassy knoll within shouting distance of a castle that used to belong to someone— he can't remember who. Someone who had been important, though. Whoever it was. There are trees behind them and the sun is just beginning to rise.

Emma rubs her eyes, but the world's still there when she looks again. Jefferson, half behind her and half to the side, sneaks a wide rough grin at her expense. He wants to elbow her obnoxiously. He wants to say _I told you so._

"Well?" he says.

Emma shakes her head and sighs harshly. "This is it?"

"This is it."

"The land of fairy tales," she says, and her voice is unexpectedly soft. "_Oh._ I can wake up any moment now." She lifts her head and says it to the sky. "Any minute. Now would be good. This would be a convenient time."

"Oh," Jefferson says, strolling away from her a little, hands in his pockets. "No one's listening to you. No one's here. In fact, we're not really even here. Here isn't even here. Nothing is here."

"What?" She squints at him. "I'm not really complaining if you want to tell me that this is all some dramatic hallucination brought on by overwork and too much caffeine, but— isn't that kind of the opposite of what you've been saying all this time?"

"Look." He bows to her, continues the movement downwards, and fumbles for a moment somewhere in the grass. It's invisible to her, he knows, and difficult enough for him to make out, for that matter. But the leylines are unmistakable for those with the right type of experience, and if there's one thing he knows, it's the shapes of things. So he finds the edge, and slips his fingers underneath, and pulls. There's a dead nothing underneath, a vicious sort of nothing, that bites at their eyes and their throats and twists and pulls. It's not meant to be seen by humans. It's not really meant to be seen by anything, this underlying warp and woof of the fabric of reality. Emma gags slightly behind him and he drops the edge of the world back hurriedly, stands, and swallows. "It's really a beautiful illusion," he says. "This whole world is mad, and pretending to be sane. Look, it's me, if I was an entire planet."

"I don't—" Emma's having trouble getting hold of herself. He turns to look at her, and steps forward, puts a hand on her arm. Her gaze slips down to rest on his fingers, which tense on her sleeve. "Um. I don't understand."

"This is an illusion," he says softly. "No one's here. Not really here. We could go looking for the citizens of this world, and we'd find silent-mouthing mereghosts, nothing more. Facsimiles. Mirror images. Nothing real. Everything's just— placeholders. Because of the curse."

"The curse," she says faintly. She lifts a hand to her forehead.

"Emma," he says, firmly. She reacts to the tone, turns to him, straightens her spine and squares her shoulders. "This is what you need to do. You need to break the curse, and bring everything to reality again. Breathe life into it."

"How?" she says, and then, "You're being ridiculous." But at least the _how?_ is first. Jefferson bites his lip, and shrugs gently.

"I don't know yet," he says. "I just know it has to be done. But if you'll help me, instead of insisting that I'm being ridiculous all the time, it'll go a little faster."

"Uh," says Emma, noncommitally. She stands with her back to him and looks out over the shallow bowl of the valley below, eyes drifting along it to the silent castle. Everything has ceased, here. Everything is waiting.

Time has stopped.

It makes him want to howl.

"Is this what you wanted?" She glances back at him, and waits with strange patience for his attention. "Jefferson? Is this what you wanted?"

He forces his eyes away from the empty castle windows, back to her. "No. This isn't it."

"Then why were you in such a hurry to get home?"

Jefferson swallows, hard. "I didn't know it would be like this. I should have known. I should have expected it. You can't empty a land of its soul and expect it to still be alive; the curse took us from where we were meant to be, planted us in foreign soil, and none of us are thriving. None of us are who we really are, Emma. Apart from you."

"I wonder," says the sheriff, and her glance is speculative. She looks at him thoughtfully for a moment, then throws her hands up in the air. "Okay. Okay. I've been here, I've seen it. What do you want from me, now?"

He takes her hands— she tries to resist, but only a little— and steps close to her, bending to look in her eyes.

"Save us," he breathes. "Be our hope, Emma Swan."

Emma sighs, and her eyes search his.

"Oh, boy," she says, quietly.

The land of fairy tales shifts and chirps around them, restless, dreaming.


	5. Straight To That Castle

**A/N: Emma watched **_**Labyrinth**_** as a child, okay?**

**Part Five: Straight To That Castle**

They wander. As they wander, he wonders. As he wonders, he speculates.

"It's probably not healthy," he says at last. Emma doesn't even look at him. She's too busy concentrating, instead, on placing her feet just so, as though the land will reject her violently if she puts too much weight down at once. The hidden tussocks and holes in the thick grass may be part of it.

"What's not?"

"Oh, I'm just thinking," he murmurs, and Emma directs a brief and voracious grin at the grass.

"_Definitely_ not healthy."

"I'm speculating," he defends himself. "On why it took you this sort of proof, this land in front of us, to make you a believer."

"I didn't say I was a believer," says Sheriff Emma Swan, and she does look at him now, and her eyes are angry and dark. "My disbelief is temporarily on hold, alright? While we get this figured out. Because it seems to me there are bigger things at stake than whether or not I believe my mother is Snow White."

He steps towards her. His mind is whirling, and he can't catch it, it's amorphous and virulent and so fast. He doesn't stop moving till the lapel of his vest is brushing her arm. Emma stands her ground, this time, and doesn't step back. Instead, she stares at him, and he swallows past something spiky and strange in his throat. _Blonde hair, falling in her face, and those eyes dark as she looks up at him, dark with anger, or dark with something else, dark with darkness, he doesn't care, she's looking— _

"Bigger things at stake," he says, and blinks twitchily. "Like what."

"Like the fact that we're lost," says the Savior, lips thin.

"We're not lost."

"We are lost. We've passed that same oak tree three times now."

He frowns briefly, spins around on his heels— no mean feat on the dimpled grassy ground— and directs a squint at the tree in question. It isn't an oak. She probably knows it isn't an oak, and she probably doesn't want to admit that, if it is an oak, its trunk is rather more red than oaks tend to be. If he pointed it out, she would probably say, sharp and staccato, "Red oak."

He doesn't point it out.

"We were heading for the castle," he says.

Perhaps it's the expression of utter befuddlement on his face that makes Emma take him by the arm. She sighs as she does it, and murmurs low to herself. He's not sure, but it sounds like, _"Not that way! Never go that way! If she'd gone that way, she'd have gone straight to that castle."_

"I'll lead the way," she says, aloud.

He lets her lead the way.

The lumpy growth-ridden ground is harder to navigate than it looks. Emma picks her way down the gentle hill and along the lush valley towards the stony face awaiting them, windows like empty eyes, still watching.

"Tell me why we're going here, again."

"I wanted to show you where your parents lived, when you were born. I overshot, though. Or the hat did. Instead, this." He trudges along beside her, spares the grass and looks up at the castle. The stone is grey. This is not, on the face of it, a surprise. "I wish I could remember who it belonged to."

"Maybe someone will tell us, when we get there."

"I keep telling you, Emma. No one's here. No one real, anyway, and the fake ones won't be able to tell us anything useful. This is a placeholder, waiting for the real thing."

"I'm supposed to be the savior," says Emma, and now she's just being obnoxious. "Maybe it'll tell me something."

Jefferson bites his tongue. He regrets it, too, the next moment, as his ankle twists in an unexpected hole and he hits the ground. Emma gets tugged down with him, and for the second time in far too short a period, she lands on him, elbow first. He loses his breath. He struggles along without it, regardless, while the Sheriff hovers over him. She's luminous, for a moment, till her mouth twists in a frown and the heel of her palm connects solidly with his chest.

"You have to watch where you're going. Even I know that."

She's up first, and then helping him. He lets her, and leans on her, and resumes trudging along at her side. She gives his gait a suspicious glance.

"Oh, come on. You're not going to tell me you twisted your ankle again."

"I'm not going to tell you anything," he says through his teeth. His foot is on fire. There are definitely some nerves in distress down there, crossed like wires and with pain arcing between them. He limps defiantly. Emma rolls her eyes.

"For God's sake," she says, "come here."

Her arm is around him, now, looped at his back, and she slides her hand with fingers flat around his far side. Her thumb insinuates itself into a belt loop. Her shoulder fits, quite snugly, under his arm. He ignores all this, or he does his best.

"Why did you need this," he says, again. "Why did you need the land to prove to you?"

"Prove, nothing," says Emma Swan, with a soft grunt as they start up the rise towards the castle. "This could still be some weird optical illusion. Maybe you drugged me again. Maybe I'm still at my apartment and I'm dreaming this."

"Maybe ferrets will grow wings and run for office," says Jefferson, then immediately, "No, that does happen. Maybe there's more of the curse on you than you think. Maybe we've all been mistaken, and we'll be found out for liars. Lying liars. Lying to ourselves."

"I'm not a liar," says Emma, "which is why I never told you I believed you."

He nearly shoves her away.

"And I suppose that little act before you hit me over the head with the telescope was just an honest change of heart, then?" His tone drips vitriol. She flinches as though spattered, and has nothing to say. Jefferson leans on her, a little harder.

"Oh, all this unhealthy speculation is making me ill," he says, suddenly very tired.

They're at the castle, anyway. The door meets them, silent, stoic, strange.


	6. One Eye

**A/N: Now with extra AU. How'd you guys like the finale? Not enough Mad Swan, am I right?**

**Part Six: One Eye**

Halfway through the door he catches her shaking her head, letting out a skeptical breath, and he's burdened with the onset of a theory. He follows her through, onto the intricate flagstones of the great hall, and echoes every movement: she looks up, she gulps audibly, her eyes widen, she opens her mouth, she closes it, she grits her teeth. For the space of five minutes, he's her doppelganger, he grasps with deft fingers at her psyche, her mind. He feels what she feels.

"Oh," he says, and she turns to look at him, standing there with his back to the open door.

"What?"

"Mm." He taps his fingers on his lips, looks at her and speculates, circling her. "I just had a thought."

"Great," says Emma Swan, with more than her usual sarcasm. Which he grins at, because it doesn't hurt in the least.

"What do you think?"

She quirks an eyebrow at this. "That's your theory? Asking me what I think?"

"No, that was a non sequitur. Answer the question."

She bites her lower lip and shrugs, looking around them. "It's— big."

"It's a castle," he says. "They don't make them bite sized. What else."

"Nice stonework." She doesn't know. She doesn't know anything about stonework, and she's frowning at the lowest stair on the grand staircase, leading ever upwards, wide and implacable as a stubborn giant's mouth. Each one is a single stone, carved delicately and worn smooth. He can see the ghosts of master craftsmen hovering over them, leaving fingerprints and parts of themselves, their souls, their names. He wishes he could remember who lived here, once. Emma meanders around, and he can feel the disbelief coming off of her in waves. It means he's right, so he sets aside the irritation, for the moment, and comes to her.

He takes her hands in his, though she watches him warily.

"Emma. Listen."

"What."

He hesitates, only for a moment, and laces his fingers through hers. "This is my theory. It wasn't really a non sequitur. You can't seem to believe, even with the proof staring you in the face."

"I don't want to," she says, incredibly soft. "It's not my nature."

"People say things like that when they want to excuse themselves. You know you should believe, by this point. Look how far we've come."

She slips her hands away from his, and puts them by her sides, curling her fingers around nothing, empty fists. She might not want to touch him, but he wants to touch her— he lays his hands experimentally on her shoulders, and she doesn't move away. It's enough of an acceptance. He leaves them there.

"Emma," he says, leaning in, and her eyes flash upwards to meet his, then down again. "You're cursed, Emma."

"So I've been told," she mutters. Jefferson shakes his head.

"I don't mean that. There's layers, here. There's something else. You're cursed with disbelief. No matter how much proof I show to you— no matter how obvious it is— you can't let it rest. You can't take the leap."

She looks down at the flagstones, as though they're about to open up beneath her, a gaping mouth wanting only to swallow.

"I think I want to go home," she says, almost bitter from the sound of it. He curls his fingers into the fabric of her shirt, holds her tighter. "What do you want from me? You brought me here. I saw it."

"You're looking, but you're not seeing. You need proof, I'm giving you proof. What else can I give you, Emma?"

His breath. Her lips.

"I can't help it. I can't force myself to believe." She's defensive, and her eyes meet his again, but only to glare. Jefferson draws a long, shuddering breath from somewhere deep, somewhere sunken.

"You've got one eye to the telescope," he says. "What's the other one looking at?"

She drops her left lid, slowly, in something like a wink, and looks at him sideways, haphazard, half.

"Darkness," she says. "All I see is black."

"Wait," he murmurs, and leans forward to brush his lips there, high up on her cheekbone beneath her long dark lashes. She holds impossibly still, and there's a long moment that creeps silently past, trying to go unnoticed.

Then she says, "_Colors_." And Jefferson grins a dizzying grin.

"All curses can be broken," he says. "All things can be undone."


	7. From The Window

**Part Seven: From The Window**

"So what?" she says, and he thinks, _Ah, skepticism, skepticism mixed with sarcasm_, it's like eating lemons with salt on them, and her tone of voice seems aimed to pluck at his tongue, but then he realizes she hasn't actually finished her sentence. The sarcasm is incidental, it seems. "So what do we do now?"

This is a good question, one of which he approves. Doesn't quite know how to answer, but he gives it two thumbs up nonetheless. She eyes his eager hands with suspicion.

"They're just thumbs," he says, defensively, and kinks them a few times to demonstrate.

"Give me some idea," says Emma Swan, suddenly looking exhausted to an immense degree. Dealing with him? Traveling through a hat? Visiting new worlds? Could be any of them, or all of them, that tires her out. He feels the surging of a sudden fierce joy, which just as suddenly subsides and leaves him dizzied in the shallows.

"Let's take a look around."

She twists her head to the side and grits her teeth obviously, clearly not at all sure she wants to follow him. But when he moves off and starts up the stairs, she's behind him only by a few steps. She doesn't want to be left alone, either, he thinks, and is distracted by a surge of sympathy. Well, who does, really?

He knows these steps and the steps know him. It's so painfully familiar that he thinks he might be sleepwalking. Somnambulism runs in his family, or it did, when he had a family. His parents, his daughter, his wife. They could all take strolls by moonlight, holding hands, and never even know. It didn't make a difference. They placed their feet carefully and avoided cliffs. Some deep-laid hindbrain steered them on gravel paths. He trips on the stairs, and it proves to him that he is awake: he is not safe.

The castle has a ghostly echo of itself running hands along the walls.

"I know this place," he says. "I wish I knew why."

Emma says nothing. Is there, perhaps, nothing to say? He keeps going.

"Everywhere here was somewhere there," he tells her, taking on the lecturing tone of a school teacher with a class that refuses to learn. "I mean, we are there, but not really. So. This place is not the real version of itself, nothing here is real, because it's all been lifted and taken elsewhere, to Storybrooke. And this is just the imitation."

"I get it."

He doesn't, though. He half turns on the steps, and gives her a scoffing grin, that even he doesn't believe.

"Reminding myself," he says. "Reminding myself to believe this."

"You haven't been back, since it happened?" She'll speak of the events of the curse as though they're real, though the disbelief in her eyes is like a lion crouched. Maybe she's grown tired of his amazement, as he's grown tired of her refusal to accept the truth.

"You know I haven't."

"Right." Her dark eyes scan the walls as they resume walking. She looks interested, if dubious. Probably wondering how this illusion is maintained, or what he slipped in her drink this time, or how long this dream will last. "The hat wouldn't work."

"Till you."

"I did try, you know," she murmurs. "Even though I didn't believe you. I still did try."

"Things would be so much easier for you if you would just let go. Give in."

"I can't."

This is, he thinks, probably true. He huffs out a breath, grants the floor in front of him a half-smile. "That's the curse. I'll find a way, Emma. We'll fix it."

"Oh yeah? How do you fix curses, exactly?"

He whirls on her, two steps above, looming over her, the only light in him shining through his eyes. He leans close; it takes not even a second. His hand is cupped around her face, and he pulls her towards him, till they're bowed together, and their bodies and the stairs make a long narrow triangle, with their mouths as the apex, hovering so close that even breath can hardly escape. Her breath, perforce, catches, and she looks like she doesn't dare let her heart beat, in case he feels it. He does feel it, involuntary shuddering, beating against her rib cage and against his own chest, hammering them together, nails and twine and glue, inseparable.

"All it takes," he whispers to her, like this is the secret, "is true love's kiss."

Emma swallows. She's regaining her composure, but it's difficult and her grasp on the situation is slippery and unsure.

"You don't love me."

He tilts his head. If he was wearing the hat, its brim would be granting her a narrow margin of space; as it is, any closer and they'll be inside each other's head.

"No," he agrees, quietly. "I don't. That's why I have to find a way, Emma. Whether it's love or not, the important thing is, it has to be true."

He lets her go, a little reluctantly, and turns from her to continue up the stairs. She stands for a moment before he hears her step forward, softly, as though she doesn't want him to hear and know that she's behind him. He does know, though; he always knows when he's being followed.

He's a little more fuzzy on the times when there's someone ahead of him, though, and that's why he doesn't see it coming when he reaches the first door on the first floor and flings it open. He's ready to declaim his presence; the proximity of Emma, of her mouth, of her blazing dark eyes, has set him thrumming, electricity sparking around his nerve ends, and he's full of determination, of spice and vigor, of the fight and the wrestle. No one can stand before him.

No one does.

She sits in her chair, just as he left her— the memory is old, and fuzzed, from taking it out so many times and running gentle fingertips over it— with her hands full. It's the tea cup he bought her, the one with her name on it. The light from the window shines mistily on hair so blonde as to be nearly white; her dress is azure, and speaks of the skies. She looks up at him without really seeing him, and she smiles at what, to her, must be a ghost.

"Hello, love," she says, to the doorway.

Emma is just behind him, and she pauses, her shoulder against his back.

"What," she starts, and then stumbles to a stop. The ghost-girl's hands are wrapped protectively around the cup, which steams slightly in the cool air, but with concentration and a leap of logic it is possible to make out the beginning of the name. The curling flourishes of the _A_. The sweetly biased line of the _L_, and the cut-short mimicry of the _I_ afterwards. "_Oh_," says Emma, and her sudden understanding is more than Jefferson can bear.

"Nothing is real," he says, to her, to her, to himself. He speaks with desperation, to convince himself that it is true. "Nothing is real."

The light from the window shines steadily on. No one disappears.


	8. Shorn

**A/N: Updating this in the hopes that we'll be given more canon Mad Swan to work with soon. Also, if you like my writing, please take a minute to check out my novel, Tendence and Cavile, at Leeftail Press!**

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><p><strong>Part Eight: Shorn<strong>

The ghost girl shifts, lifts her arms to stretch them above her head. She smiles in Jefferson's direction, possibly even specifically at him. The still-steaming cup floats in midair, forgotten. "Aren't you going to say hello?"

He doesn't feel the motion of his steps, of his feet gliding over rough stone floors to approach the ghost girl by the flickering dead fire. All he's aware of, really aware of, is the lurch of his body when it stops at last, when it holds him still, some three or four feet away from her.

His voice is tangled in gibbous strands in his throat; it crawls up from the depths, lapsing, necrotic.

"No point," he manages. "You're not real."

The ghost pouts a little. "That's quite rude, you know. You always were, though. The first time we met," she calls to Emma— he's more or less forgotten about Emma, at this point— "he forewent introducing himself to tell me I should get my hair cut instead. He is the very soul of politeness, I don't think."

Emma moves forward a step and he can feel her reaching out to him a split second before her fingers close around his elbow.

"Are you sure?" she asks him, quietly. She's probably faking a smile at the ghost girl. She does that kind of thing. He won't even bother to look behind him and find out for sure, because she's so predictable it isn't worth it.

Jefferson leaves off gritting his teeth long enough to answer. "Of course I'm sure."

"How do you know? Jefferson, she _looks_ real."

"A believer again, instead of a doubter. I don't mind role-play, Emma Swan, but would you pick one and stick with it?" This isn't true, though, her voice is full of doubt: doubt of him, of his doubt, not of the sweetly smiling ghost. He can't stand a moment more of this. He surges forward, two steps, three, and his hand only falters a little as he reaches out. His fingers find the edge of the ghost's sleeve, and it's the edge of nothing. His hand passes through. No resistance. The ghost girl sits and looks at him. He can feel his anger cooling at the edges, beginning to fade into regret, self-doubt. "I told you. Nothing here is real, not now. It's all there."

"But," says Emma, and she looks from him to the ghost, and her eyes and her heart are full, and she can think of nothing to say, to finish the sentence she's started. Jefferson crouches beside the chair, looks up into the ghost's face.

"Hi," he says, breathless but kindly.

"_There_ you are," says the ghost of his wife. "Such a relief, to have you back again. Just in time for tea."

Jefferson clutches at his heart, fist clenched.

"I always make it, don't I?"

"Scraping by," says his wife dreamily.

Jefferson leans forward, the weight of his hatless head too much for him all of a sudden, and he rests his forehead on the broad smooth arm of the chair. He can feel the space that she does not take up, the ghosting of ghost fingers as his unwife smooths a hand over his unruly hair.

"You took your own advice," she says. "Shorn. Short."

Emma is no doubt standing behind him, wordless and waiting. No doubt wondering who this is, who she is to Jefferson, no doubt she's vibrating with impatience and pent-up anger, she wants to go home, she can't go without him or she would, she would, and he could stay here, stay behind, and paint the walls of his, _oh_, it was—

"How could I forget?" He's mumbling into his hand, and Emma clears her throat. He lifts his head and turns to look at her, opening his mouth. Closes it again without speaking: there's no anger to be found, no impatience. There is nothing but compassion in her eyes, and he's not sure what to do about that. Or if anything should be done about it. Or when. Or why.

He looks away from her and swallows.

"I know whose castle this is," he says. He flinches away from his own words. "Mine. It used to be mine, before— before Regina." He gives a short little shake of the head. "How can I have forgotten?"

"Maybe you're cursed," says Emma, Emma the doubter and skeptic, but she's being kind, not sarcastic, and her eyes flicker from the ghost girl and settle on him. They stay there. "We'll— we'll figure it out."

"I'm not crying," he says fiercely.

"I didn't say you were."

He half-laughs and swipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. "Maybe I'm allergic."

"Can you leave her?" says Emma, when what she means is _Can you stand it? _Jefferson studies the stone floor beneath his knees.

"It's not her," he says, "not really. She's long gone. So yes. I can."

He's still on his knees at the side of the ornate chair. His vision clears, clarifies, and he realizes the blurred shape in front of him is Emma's hand, palm up, waiting.

He feels bruises, coming on, covering his kneecaps.

He takes her hand, and she helps him. Helps him up. Helps him. He takes one glance back at the ghost girl, smiling into empty air, and moves on without hesitating.


	9. In The Doorway

**A/N: It's time to play "Guess The Author's Head Canon!" Also, show, please don't get canceled until we get an episode with the backstory to Grace's mom, so I can see if I'm right about stuff, okay?**

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><p><strong>Part Nine: In The Doorway<strong>

"So," she says.

He nearly trips on the last step down. He catches himself in time, though, catches himself before she attempts to catch him, and finds himself more or less upright at the bottom of the stairs. He lifts his chin above the scarf, stretches his neck.

"So," he says.

Emma heaves a half-hearted sigh that she is apparently trying to hide from him. Her hands swing briefly at her sides, then her fingers lace together in front of her and she points at him.

"This is your castle."

"Was," says Jefferson, one hand now busy with the scarf, arranging it, arranging it just so. He thinks of scarves, and scars, and how they encircle him. He can't get away. "It was my castle."

"What happened?"

Emma's eyes are dark with trepidation when he swings sideways to look at her. She looks as though she regrets asking; or as though she's afraid she's going to regret asking, which for all intents and purposes is nearly the same thing. He looks at her, the same look he gives scissors post-sharpening: weighing in the balance, judging the sharpness.

"I made a mistake," he says abruptly.

"In bringing us here?" says Emma, looking suddenly relieved. "I'll say you did. I did say it, actually. More than once."

"No. Not that. Well, maybe. But that's not what I mean. I made a mistake." He swipes at the edge of the bannister and inspects his thumb for dust, then moves away, away from the uphill climb, away from Emma. "That's what happened."

She's following him, though, because of course she is. He picks up speed at about the fifth stride— he'll be back outside on the castle grounds in no time, at this rate— but she half-skips a step or two and homes in just behind him, dogging his heels like a good sheriff should. He thinks briefly, fleetingly, of warning her off with the only story about a sheriff he knows— that one in Nottingham. Got too close to the royal family. Never a good decision.

"_Jefferson_," she says, and her voice is stern as a school teacher— something she picked up from her mother, no doubt— and he reaches the arched stone of the doorway and swings around to catch her as she steps into him, one hand gripping the stone to block her path, the other out, warding her off and sheltering her in, hand hovering just around the curve of her lower back, not quite touching. He steps into her, and she looks down at him, then up— at the scarf and the scar— she swallows hard— then up, then up. He drops his head downwards so she can hear him as he keeps his voice low. The walls have ears. Ears have walls. All magic comes with a price. Everyone pays for their magic.

"I made a mistake," he says, and even his whisper is harsh. "Alice wanted— she wanted to see her home once more. I thought— there'd be no harm, I thought. But I couldn't go. I was busy. I had an _assignment_." He bites the word out, and Emma doesn't need to ask who for. "I sent her with someone I trusted. I've known him forever. We— we were kids together, even. I was the talent, the portal jumper, and he handled the business end of the deal. But he wanted to branch out. Learn to jump himself. So." He swallows, closes his eyes briefly to carry on. "So. He took Alice through."

Emma looks up at him, that look on her face, that look that means, sometimes, she's sorry; and means, sometimes, she's about to tell him that he's insane. She can say either. They both apply.

"They didn't come back?"

"Hat's rules," says Jefferson. "Both, or none at all. He'd said— he'd told me that he wanted to branch out." He swallows, but it's hard; he barely manages it. There's something thick and sharp there in his throat, as though someone's taken scissors to it. Emma, for her part, is breathlessly sad. The weight of her regard sends him spinning in a diagonal.

"You couldn't find her?"

"I tried. I spent everything I had, looking for her. For him. No one could help me. I lost—" His eyes drift past her to focus momentarily on what had been his home, long ago. "I lost everything except Grace. So I stopped before she was gone, too. I hung up my hat, and we started over." His eyes drift closed again. "I can't forget."

Unexpectedly, he feels Emma's hands fist into his jacket. She pulls him close, and rests her forehead gently against his.

"What sort of person would you be if you could?" she murmurs.

There's a moment of time, and they stand in it; outside, something ticks. Seconds pass. They breathe. They breathe.

"She's out there somewhere," says Emma.

Jefferson's chin jerks up, and he moves back slightly.

"She's out there somewhere," he agrees, and he steps aside, and swings an arm wide to welcome her back into the world.

She matches his steps as they walk away from the castle that had once been his.

"Who was he? Your business partner."

Jefferson swallows, and thinks how much he would like some tea for his dusty throat.

"Most people knew him as the Hare, because he was always running. After something, or away from something, but always running." In spite of himself, a smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. "I called him by his real name. Cass. Cassady. I always wondered where he ended up. What he was chasing, when he went there."

"Yeah," says Emma, and the next unexpected feeling is her hand, smoothing gently down his arm, comforting, once, then again. "I wonder."


	10. The Cartographer

**Part Ten: The Cartographer**

She's walking along just a step in front of him, and he could mark time by the loose swing of her hips, so strangely confident in a foreign land. It makes him stop, suddenly, and say, "I'm beginning to think."

She turns to face him, but she doesn't stop, she keeps moving away, and her smile is both sardonic and hopeful. Sardonically hopeful? Hopefully sardonic? Both, both, neither, it doesn't matter, because it is a smile, and he could warm his hands at it if it were cold out.

"That's a scary statement," she says. "Am I supposed to take you literally? Have you not actually been thinking this whole time?" She lifts her hands, drops her gaze away from him toward the ground. "Never mind. Ignore that question."

"What I'm starting to think," says Jefferson, ignoring her patiently, because maybe he owes her a few cheap shots, "is that we're going about this all wrong."

Her eyebrows raise; he can practically hear it. "No kidding."

"The concept is sound," he says, and repeats it just to hear himself say the words. "The concept. Is sound. Nothing wrong with the concept. It's the execution that needs work." And if he twitches, and develops a tic in the lid of his left eye at the word _execution_, that's nobody's business but his own. But she's hovered closer to him again, and her eyes are direct.

"You're twitching," she says.

"Emma," says Jefferson, and grins, loosely, like he can't help it. He can. He can stop smiling at her any time he wants to. He just doesn't want to, much. "Let's try this. You take the lead."

"What?" says Emma Swan, blankly. "You don't mean that."

He shrugs, turns his mouth downwards. "Sure I do."

"I've never _been_ here before, Jefferson. Even if I subscribed to the notion that my parents were born here, even if I was born here and left as a brand-new baby, even you wouldn't say that I should have committed the lay of the land to memory."

"Geography's got nothing to do with it," says Jefferson, and he will stop smiling any minute now. Or maybe he won't, because it's starting to make her look unsettled and irritated, and as much as he loves it when Emma smiles at him, getting under her skin like this is pretty fun, too.

"It's got everything to do with it. I don't even know that directions work the same way here as they do at home."

"It isn't home, Emma," he says. "It's just the other side of the hat."

She rolls her eyes at that. "Whatever."

He folds his arms. "Look, just go with me on this, for a while. I've been leading you around, trying to find something that will break your own personal curse, something that will make you stop being a skeptic and start to believe the evidence of your eyes. Nothing's working. We might as well just be meandering, for all the results we're getting."

"You mean we _haven't_ been meandering?" Her arms are folded, now, too, mimicking his posture. He thinks she's probably doing it unconsciously, though.

"Not without purpose," he tells her. "But the purpose hasn't been fulfilled. We're not finding what you need. So what if we let you try and find it? You make the decisions. You choose the path. It's worth a shot. So let's try it this way."

She drops her arms then, and gives an exasperated sigh. "Why on earth would you expect this to work?"

He reaches over, wraps his fingers around her arm just above the elbow, and trains his eyes on hers, waiting till he has her full attention. She gives it unwillingly, grudgingly, but she gives it in the end.

"What?" she says, softly.

"This world is in your bones," he says. "This is where you belong. Wherever else you spend your life, your soul knows when it's home. That's why the geography of the thing doesn't matter. You don't need to know east or west, up or down, left or right. You don't need to know that we're in the meadows just to the south of Witzend, or that the castle where your mother was born is somewhere beyond those hills over there. Your head might not know it, but it's your heart that reads the map."

She shivers. He can feel it under his palm, along with the quickened beat of her pulse, butterfly-swift.

"That doesn't make any sense."

"You're going to balk at senselessness _now_?" he says, eyes still levelly on hers. He wills her to listen. He wills her to choose to do what he asks.

She rolls her eyes.

"Okay," she says. "We'll do it your way."

He doesn't point out that this is what they've been doing all along; she knows it, she doesn't need the reminder. Instead, she starts walking, tentative steps that take him by surprise. He trails along behind her for a few moments, till she stops and waits for him to catch up to her.

"Jefferson," she says, and pauses while she puts her words in order. "Why didn't you remember that it was your castle?"

He swallows, hard.

"It hasn't been mine for a long time," he says. "Sometimes, people forget. Places remember who belongs to them. They remind you, when you walk back through the door."

"You forgot."

Another swallow. It is getting increasingly difficult.

"I wanted to forget," he says. "All I see when I think of home is a big, beautiful house with a black and white color scheme and a telescope in every window. I hate it. It kept me captive. But it is what it is. People forget; things are re-written, things-" He trails off, shaking his head. "Why are you asking me this?"

"I want to know what's written in your bones," says Emma, but she says it so quietly, he can pretend he hasn't heard.

When she starts walking forward once more, it's with him at her side.


End file.
